Video surfaces of Bloomberg saying father and son who died of heroin overdoses were ‘not a good family’

Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said that a father and son who both died of heroin overdoses were “not a good family” in March remarks first reported by the New York Daily News.

“Daily News had a picture on the front page of a father and a son — they both OD’d at the same party. I mean, it’s not a good family — craziness,” Bloomberg says in the clip from the Bermuda Executive Forum in Manhattan, drawing laughs from the audience.

The remark is in reference to an October 2017 New York Daily News article about the deaths of Joseph Andrade, 44, and his son Carlos, both of whom died outside an apartment building in Brooklyn of apparent overdoses.

In the 2019 clip, Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor, goes on to use the incident to blast marijuana legalization.

“And then we are going hellbent for whether in this country to legalize marijuana, another addictive drug, where we’ve never done the research to what it does to people,” Bloomberg said. “Maybe, in the end, it’s going to turn out that it doesn’t hurt, but preliminary evidence shows it reduces a teenage user of marijuana’s IQ by 10 points and it doesn’t come back.”

The remarks predate the beginning of Bloomberg’s presidential campaign in November.

Recordings of earlier remarks have dogged Bloomberg in recent months, with progressive podcaster Benjamin Dixon resurfacing comments the billionaire made in 2015 defending the “stop-and-frisk” policy and its targeting of young minority men.

“Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25,” Bloomberg says in the clip. “That’s true in New York, it’s true in virtually every city.”

Bloomberg apologized for the policy shortly before announcing his run for the White House.

In a statement to The Hill, a Bloomberg spokesperson said “Mike Bloomberg has led the fight to end opioid and prescription drug abuse, has a comprehensive plan to tackle it as president, and understands the terrible crisis that is destroying communities across the country,” citing Bloomberg’s actions on prescription drug abuse as mayor and charitable contributions toward addressing the opioid epidemic.

Updated at 5:14 p.m.